MENTAL health patients who should be admitted to hospital will be made to live in the community following an NHS shake-up decision, a watchdog boss has warned.

Health chiefs have approved plans to reduce beds and replace all of East Lancas-hire's mental health wards with one purpose-built hosp-ital. This will see more people living at home.

But Phil Pye, chairman of the Patient and Public Involvement Forum for Lanc-ashire Care Trust, the count-y's mental health authority, said: "In some cases there will be people who need hospital care who will have to stay at home.

"It is putting the burden of care back on the families. I am not saying that is a bad thing but in some cases there will be a need, especially with an aging population, to provide inpatient hospital wards.

"A lot of families do want to care for their relatives but they need breaks to recover."

Following a 16-week consu-ltation, the area's Primary Care Trusts, which control how NHS cash is spent in the county, have published a report outlining what they want to do.

The specialist units in East Lancashire's hospitals will be replaced and the new unit could have up to 50 per cent less beds.

However a location for the new hospital, likely to cater for around 150 patients inclu-ding court-referred cases, has not been decided.

The private Kemple View in Langho and Calderstones hospital in Whalley, which each cater for mental health patients, will not be affected.

The official consultation document said: "The starting point will always be support for people in their own homes and developing individual coping strategies." It said hospital care would be provided "if needed".

Services are provided at Burnley General Hospital and on the site of Royal Blackburn Hospital in a unit that was built only five years ago.

Yet bosses say more community-based services will be set up to allow people to live at home. Mr Pye said: "How can they spend so much money on that and then decide to close it down?"

The PCT document said people had backed the plan - but expressed concern over how relatives will travel to and from one hospital site that will serve East Lancashire's population of more than 500,000.

A statement following Friday's decision said: "Location of the sites is a key issue for respondents and there must be further local consultation on the site options and transport issues for each site, even if options are limited."

Board chairman Sandra Beswick said: "I am delighted that mental health service developments in Lancashire can now move forward and that service users and their carers will have the opportunity to access improved community care and better hospital facilities."